New collaborative art gallery opens this week in old Guelph museum

Boardinghouse set-up

Rob O'Flanagan, Guelph Mercury

Verne Harrison, the gallery co-ordinator at Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, unwraps art that will be part of the inaugural exhibition at the new Boarding House Gallery on Dublin Street at Waterloo Avenue.

GUELPH—Formerly a boarding house, then a museum, the historic limestone building at the corner of Dublin Street and Waterloo Avenue is fast becoming a haven of visual art.

The first and perhaps most public component of the Boarding House for the Arts at 6 Dublin St. will open Thursday night. “1” is the inaugural exhibition of visual art at Boarding House Gallery, a collaborative effort between the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre and the University of Guelph’s School of Fine Art and Music (SOFAM).

The gallery, in the former location of the Guelph Civic Museum, will give more exposure to Macdonald Stewart’s voluminous and important permanent collection, while featuring exhibitions by the school’s well-known artist/faculty members and its best students, insiders said.

Kirk Roberts and his wife, Peregrine Wood, purchased the building for close to $950,000 from the city, the deal being finalized at the end of November.

Thirteen faculty members of SOFAM will be featured in “1”, with an opening reception Thursday beginning at 7 p.m. It is open to the public and free of charge. Many of the works are from the Macdonald Stewart permanent collection. It runs until March 24.

John Kissick is the director of SOFAM and a nationally recognized painter. For some time, he said in an interview, the school has been interested in establishing alternative downtown exhibition space.

“What we didn’t have was something that would be in the core of the city that would highlight the best of our students’ work, including graduate student work,” Kissick said. “This will give the Guelph community an opportunity to see the quality of the programming and the excellence of our students.”

The large main floor gallery provides a bridge between the art being produced on campus, as well as work in Macdonald Stewart’s collection, and the heart of the city, he added.

Aidan Ware, Macdonald Stewart’s coordinator of education and development, said the centre wanted to establishment a different kind of engagement with the broader community.

“We wanted to be downtown in a collaborative space where we were able to show more works from our collection,” said Ware, adding there are about 7,000 works in that collection.

Ware described Boarding House for the Arts as a “living organism” that is now filling up with artists’ studios, and will act as an incubator for art activity in the city’s core.

“I think the new gallery meets the citizenry of Guelph half way,” Kissick added. “And it potentially brings in new audiences to see the work, groups that might not ordinarily be on campus or at Mac Stew.”

SOFAM will be responsible for 75 per cent of the programming at Boarding House Gallery, while the Macdonald Stewart will be responsible for the rest. Kissick said nearly all of Macdonald Stewart’s “extraordinary” permanent collection is in storage and rarely seen, and the new gallery will provide flexibility to bring that work into public view.

Financing for the project involved some “groveling,” he added. Money to pay the rent in the building is coming from various pots—some from Macdonald Stewart, some from SOFAM’s operating budget, some from the College of Arts, and various university grants. The gallery will be open during regular business hours.

“My hope is that it’s a permanent fixture,” Kissick said. “My aspiration is that the university looks to the downtown core as a part of campus.”

Kirk Roberts said the original vision for the building was to create a centre for the arts and that vision is being quickly fulfilled.

“We really narrowed the focus to creating a centre focused on visual arts, and started to get a good sense of what was the capacity of the building and what compatible uses were,” he said.

Space for artists, an educational/training capacity, ways to develop young creative talent, and a public events component are all part of the planning.

“Guelph is such a strong city broadly in the arts, and in visual arts it’s been crying out for a facility like this for a long time,” Roberts added. “There was just so much interest in the space right from the start.”

A launch and open house for the entire Boarding House for the Arts centre is tentatively scheduled for the end of April. The building is about 75 per cent occupied.